SKYLAB: EARLY U.S.
SPACE STATION

Skylab
was a manned space station launched into Earth orbit by the United
States in May 1973. It was made from the third stage of a Saturn V
launch vehicle. A crew of three astronauts occupied Skylab during
each of three missions. The longest mission, which ended in February
1974, lasted almost three months.

The
Skylab missions obtained vast amounts of scientific data, and they
demonstrated to the American public that people could live and work
productively in space for months at a time.

Skylab
was intended to be a temporary--not a permanent--presence in space.
Abandoned in 1974, it reentered Earth's atmosphere in July 1979.
Although most of the spacecraft burned up during reentry, scattered
pieces landed in Australia and the southern Indian Ocean.

A POST-APOLLO
PROGRAM

In
1969 a Space Task Group recommended to President Richard Nixon a
space program to follow the missions to the Moon. The plan included
a permanently occupied space station, a reusable shuttle spacecraft,
and eventual missions to Mars. But because of increasing budget
pressures these ideas received little political or public support.
Only the Space Shuttle won favor and funding, and even that decision
was controversial.

When
the last two Apollo missions were canceled, NASA used some of the
remaining Apollo hardware for an experimental space station, Skylab,
as an interim program before the Shuttle was ready to fly.